One country that is likely to suffer badly from rising anxiety about immigration in Europe is the place I’m in at the moment - Turkey. Turkey’s bid to join the European Union is already in trouble over issues like Cyprus. But the biggest anxiety in western Europe has always been that if this relatively poor country of 70m Muslims joins the EU, there will be mass emigration from Turkey to the rest of the EU - in particular to countries like Germany and the Netherlands, where there are already big Turkish communities. Officials in Brussels used to say that the record of all past enlargements was that - despite the provisions for complete free movement of labour within the EU - people tended to stay put. Spain and Portugal, for example, were much poorer than France when they joined the EU in the 1980s, but their citizens did not move en masse. But this soothing scenario has been blown away by the mass emigration from Poland and the rest of central Europe to the richer parts of the EU, in particular to Britain, that I discussed in my Tuesday FT column. Given the levels of anxiety about the integration of the current Muslim populations in western Europe, who is going to want to roll the dice when it comes to Turkey? Incidentally, many of the people who responded to my column this week have taken me to task for naiveté and political correctness. So let me be clear: I was not arguing for unlimited immigration from the developing world to the west. That would be clearly be irresponsible, and politically impossible as well. What I was saying is that the United States and western Europe should acknowledge that they have a big appetite for less-skilled labour from their poorer neighbours - so they should create more paths for legal immigration from poorer countries. EU enlargement, in a sense, fits this description - although, when it comes to Turkey, it will be difficult to win the political argument domestically. I also think that it is unrealistic and inhumane to expect mass deportation of the illegals who have already made it into western Europe and the United States. But - to be honest - I’m not sure what I think about mass amnesties. On the one hand, it seems to me they clearly do encourage further illegal immigration. On the other hand, it is unjust effectively to allow people to stay in the country and work indefinitely - but never to allow them the legal rights and security that goes with citizenship.

September 15th, 2006 in Uncategorised | Permalink